Verruca Music

of course i could have used the traditional ovine sleep induction method but frankly the sheer effort required to imagine two thousand five hundred and eighty four sheep shambling over a rickety old gate was beyond the poor old bonce and enough to make the heart sink

and god knows the heart did sink

— Stuart Estell, Verruca Music

There are a lot of new books appearing at the moment. A lot. I don’t think people are writing more. People have always written and will continue to write long after typing has completely replaced handwriting. It’s just there are more people and, with the advent of print on demand and current popularity of the ebook, publishing has become a whole lot easier. I spend a lot of time looking at what people are writing, especially those writers who—for a variety of reasons—have chosen to publish their work in electronic formats, and most of the time I’m disappointed by what I see being written as it’s populist, one step above fan fiction, tailored to specific demographics, e.g. pubescent girls who’ve read all the The Southern Vampire Mysteries, Twilight novels and Vampire Diaries. And that’s fine: pubescent girls have as much right to read as anyone else.

But what if you want to read something different? You scan the predictable list of genres—horror, check; sci-fi, check; romance, check; thriller, check—but there’s no entry for ‘different’ or ‘quirky’ or ‘wait till you read this folks’ and that’s a shame because I find that most people are generally attracted to things that are out of the ordinary, once their attention is drawn to them, if the person who’s trying to catch your eye can find some way to shout louder than all the other people out there who are clamouring for your attention.

The thing is people have been writing ‘different’ and ‘quirky’ books for decades but mostly no one hears about them, which is a shame because some of them are quite good. I imagine when James Joyce published Finnegans Wake there were quite a few people who said to their mates, “Wait till you read this,” in perhaps not an entirely complimentary tone but, love it or loathe it, one thing you can’t say about Finnegans Wake is that it followed in the footsteps of others. As more writers blaze trails it gets harder and harder to read anything that you couldn’t say is in some way derivative. This brings me to Stuart Estell’s novelette Verruca Music which is available now in both print and ebook format from eight cut gallery press. This is how they describe the book:

It is absurdist comedy of the very blackest kind, informed by a love of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Peter Cook and The Goon Show. Featuring the Fibonacci sequence, floors that open up without warning, a powerful laxative, and a duvet that periodically changes colour, Verruca Music charts the narrator’s emergence from a state of fearful near-immobility assisted only by entertainments of his own devising.

I’m sure that blurb would be enough to put most people off and that’s a terrible shame. In an interview Dan Holloway, a founding member of Year Zero Writers and curator of eight cuts gallery press, had this to say about why he decided to, as he puts it, throw his hat into the ring and set up the press:

The goal is simple – to get people excited about great writing. The philosophy is equally simple – there’s great writing out there you don’t know exists, and you should. Not by making it conform to the traditional preconceptions of what stories and books are, but by putting it out there in whatever shape it wants to take and selling the public a ringside seat.

So, okay, let’s say that you read that paragraph before you read the blurb; might you be persuaded to put aside any preconceptions you had and maybe have a look at the book? If you’re still reading, let’s pretend you have. Here’s the opening:

suppose one fallen morning i failed to arise from beneath the frayed blue duvet that was my shelter

arms charged and electric with the needly shakiness of it all

the mattress on the floor constituted resting place domicile and protector all in one to whit the floor felt as though it might open up but the mattress did not

well and how do you suppose that the mattress prevented the floor from opening up

the mattress prevented the floor from opening up by providing a squashy surface into which the heart might sink

and god knows the heart did sink

the heart sank the arms felt all needly and the restless feet went swish swish swish swish back and forth back and forth back and forth

the feet went swish and the heart sank

the heart sank and the feet went swish

back and forth

Okay so you’ll have noticed a couple of things. There is no punctuation and the grammar is a bit iffy too and not because it needs a decent editor to take charge of it. I can imagine that a great many people will read that first page—if, indeed, they manage to get through the first page—and read no further and there will be nothing I or anyone else will be able to say to persuade them to turn the page and that’s okay; it’s a shame but it is okay. There will be others—and I was one—who, after reading the first page found myself captivated by the voice and, line by line, found myself with a growing list of questions, basically your five Ws. There was something not unfamiliar about this though.

Now I’m not a great fan of Joyce but I am an aficionado of Beckett even if I’m not so fond of his earlier works which he wrote while he was enthralled with all things Joycean. This is how Wikipedia defines ‘Joycean’:

A text is deemed Joycean when it is reminiscent of the writings of James Joyce, particularly Ulysses or Finnegans Wake. Joycean fiction exhibits a high degree of verbal play, usually within the framework of stream of consciousness. Works that are "Joycean" may also be technically eclectic, employing multiple technical shifts as a form of thematic or subject development. In this latter respect, it is not merely an opaque or evident technique, such as is characteristic of avant garde prose, but technical shifts that are meant to be recognized by the reader and considered as part of the narrative itself. More than anything, however, Joycean has come to denote a form of extreme verbal inventiveness which tends to push the English language towards multi-lingual polysemy or impenetrability. Joycean word play frequently seeks to imply linguistic and literary history on a single plane of communication. It therefore denies readers the simple denotative message traditional in prose in favour of the ambiguity and equivocal signification of poetry.

And although I can see some of that coming through in Verruca Music it was not Joyce that I thought of when I read that opening page, but Beckett, and late-period Beckett at that, once he had become his own man. This is how his novel How It Is opens:

how it was I quote before Pim with Pim after Pim how it is three parts I say it as I hear it

voice once without quaqua on all sides then in me when the panting stops tell me again finish telling me invocation

past moments old dreams back again or fresh like those that pass or things always and memories I say them as I hear them murmur them in the mud

in me that were without when the panting stops scraps of an ancient voice in me not mine

my life last state last version ill-said ill-heard ill-recaptured ill-murmured in the mud brief movements of the lower face losses everywhere

The writing is dense, poetic and not an easy read even if, like me, you are well-versed in his œuvre. It features, though, some common threads that appear throughout many of Beckett’s works, especially his prose pieces, the main one being a character trying to come to terms with the nature of his existence. In this case we have someone crawling through mud dragging a sack with them and, whilst making painfully slow progress, they encounter an other (in this case Pim), another common feature. Sometimes the other is real but mostly imagined (or possibly ghostly) like the voice that harangues Joe in Eh Joe or the voice of the mother in Footfalls. This is what the old woman in Rockaby hopes to see as she stares out of her window:

another creature there
somewhere there
behind the pane
another living soul
one other living soul
till the end came
in the end came
close of a long day

In Molloy’s case it is a literal voice he hears in his head:

I have spoken of a voice giving me orders, or rather advice. It was on the way home I heard it for the first time. I paid no attention to it.

In Verruca Music the other is also a voice that engages in a dialogue with the body in the bed, correcting him (e.g. when he gets the colour of the duvet wrong) or challenging him in other ways. This is a very typical Beckettian trope. As is the body in the bed (or the mud) or contained in some other way. In the novella The End it’s a boat the narrator covers with boards to form a lid:

It completely covered the boat, I’m referring to the lid. I pushed it a little towards the stern, climbed into the boat by the bow, crawled to the stern, raised my feet and pushed the lid back towards the bow till it covered me completely. […] The lid fitted so well I had to pierce a hole. It’s no good closing your eyes, you must learn to leave them open in the dark, that is my opinion. I am not speaking of sleep, I am speaking of what I believe is called waking. In any case, I slept very little at this period, I wasn’t sleepy, or I was too sleepy, I don’t know, or I was afraid, I don’t know. […] I let farts to be sure, but hardly ever a real crack, they oozed out with a sucking noise, melted in the mighty never. I don’t know how long I stayed there. I was very snug in my box, I must say.

Converting a boat is, unusual it has to be said—Beckett’s protagonists being inclined to indolence—but it’s a good example of taking extreme measures to withdraw from society. Mostly his characters are content to stay, as does the narrator in Verruca Music, in bed and have someone fetch and carry for them. This is how Estell describes his benefactor:

are you listening young man

what

make sure you are listening young man for i will be testing you later

something about being in your mid-30s

that is exactly so and moreover thinning of hair portly of paunch steadfast of political opinions and floundering of career due to circumstances beyond the control of himself myself yourself or indeed anyself at all and henceforth domiciled atop a pleasantly squashy blanket that prevented the floor from opening up and swallowing the nutrition left by a generous hand

what was that come again i thought it was a mattress and that the heart was sinking into the floor or something similar

something similar yes for listen you must agree must you not that a squashy blanket is not a million miles away from a squashy mattress and the floor opening up and swallowing our beloved protagonist is scarcely a few hundred yards at a walking pace away from the floor opening up and swallowing the nutrition left by a generous hand which in any case it never did

what

open up and swallow the nutrition

This section opens with the voice of the other who insinuates himself into the text from early on, a voice in the darkness under the duvet whose existence is never explained or questioned. The setting is very like the opening to Beckett’s Company:

A voice comes to one in the dark. Imagine.

To one on his back in the dark. This he can tell by the pressure on his hind parts and by how the dark changes when he shuts his eyes again and when he opens them again.

The “generous hand” is another feature that crops up in Beckett. In First Love the male narrator, having moved in with the prostitute Anna, settles down to a life of being taken care of:

She brought me my meals at the appointed hours, looked in now and then to see if all was well and make sure I needed nothing, emptied the stewpan once a day and did out the room once a month. She could not always resist the temptation to speak to me, but on the whole gave me no cause to complain.

We have, of course, similar scenes in Molloy and especially Malone Dies:

One day I found myself here, in the bed. Having probably lost consciousness somewhere, I benefit by a hiatus in my recollections, not to be resumed until I recovered my senses, in this bed. […] I am naked in this bed, in the blankets, whose numbers I increase and diminish as the seasons come and go. I am never hot, never cold. I don’t wash, but I don’t get dirty. If I get dirty somewhere I rub the part with my finger wet with spittle. What matters is to eat and excrete. Dish and pot, dish and pot, these are the poles. In the beginning the woman came right into the room, bustled about, enquired about my needs, my wants. I succeeded in the end in getting them into her head, my needs and my wants. It was not easy. She did not understand. […] She is an old woman. I don’t know why she is good to me. Yes, let us call it goodness, without quibbling.

Estell’s protagonist is slightly more creative, however, when it comes to sanitation:

calling the sounds of the feet to mind also had the great advantage that it was no longer necessary to attempt to maintain a level of hygiene by washing the fingers one by one in the large mug of tea which was a great relief as it had nearly gone over more than once

The main problem each faces, both Beckett’s characters and Estell’s, is how to wile away the hours. Thinking is the most obvious, and easiest, choice and much of this is done: wallowing in the past, contemplating the present and considering what the future might hold; I list them in order of ease.

One of the voices in Beckett’s That Time remembers the folly where he hid as a child of between ten and twelve looking at a “picture book” and talking to himself for company, making up “imaginary conversations” while his family were out in the dark looking for him. The protagonist in Company reminisces about being a small boy coming out of Connolly’s Stores and other of Beckett’s characters try to gain some comfort in looking back to, if not the good times exactly, then the not so bad times. The protagonist in Verruca Music recalls being fifteen:

o suppose for a moment i am fifteen years old and the composer of a fine musical work but spotty of face uncertain of mien septic of toenail and covered in eczema although nowhere obvious thank the lord or whoever it is best to thank these days and anyway i roll into school one morning to discover that i am unable to

what

to breathe

Malone prefers to makes up stories:

What tedium. And I call that playing.

Estell’s protagonist plays by devising entertainments, in much the same way as Molloy occupied himself with his sucking stones:

having established that entertainment was required it became obvious that entertainment could take the form of tasks set by way of a things to do list to keep focus diverted away from the floor opening up mattress frayed duvet et cetera and that structured entertainment might reduce the amount of

what

swish swish backwards and forwards and the sinking of the heart

One of the tasks involves the titular verruca:

suppose for a moment that the first entertainment was THE PICKING OF THE FEET

let us enumerate the potential paths avenues and vistas of satisfaction to be derived

the feet both with slightly knobbly big toes from an early onset of arthritis rheumatism deformity or general inherited knobbliness and crooked middle toes from goodness knows what seemed to provide several means of keeping occupied to whit a verruca on the underside of the right foot slightly sore to the touch could be investigated and poked and prodded to provide interesting sensations and in the hopes that it might go away

the depth of the verruca was revealed to be somewhat alarming

well and could you not have had the verruca treated

o do be quiet and listen

the width of the verruca was equally revealed to be somewhat alarming engendering the fear that the entire toe to which it belonged might be eaten through by the fibrous consuming warty mass

picking at the edges of the crater of the verruca with the right hand holding the foot steady and the left hand at the business end of things made a pleasant clicking sound due to the hardened skin from the days and years spent wandering around with nary a thread or clog between the soles of the feet and the hardness of the earth

different sounds proved possible depending upon the manner in which the picking was done to whit picking eastwards towards the arch gave the lowest pitch which one could almost persuade oneself was something approaching a dull thud

picking southwards towards the heel yielded not a click but a rasp of bitten fingernail upon hardened skin as the south edge of the verruca was not as well-defined while picking westwards was entirely the opposite with a satisfying crisp crack

north gave the highest-pitched sound

a sweet gentle sound

or as sweet and gentle a sound as one can make by picking at a verruca with the fingernails

Hence the title of the book. And the need to wash the fingers in the large mug of tea. The voice too is a form of entertainment, as Beckett puts it in Company:

Yet a certain activity of mind however slight is a necessary complement of company. That is why the voice does not say, You are on your back in the dark and have no mental activity of any kind. The voice alone is company but not enough.

In ‘Heard in the Dark 2’ Beckett’s protagonist does calculations to pass the time:

You close your eyes and try to calculate the volume. Simple sums you find a help in times of trouble. A haven.

Estell’s protagonist is somewhat more adventurous:

counting provided relief in the middle of the dark and tremulous night but not of the ordinary kind no no not that in fact the fibonacci sequence was used to great effect although it became difficult to keep track once past the first few handfuls of steps one one two three five eight is all easy enough but god knows the trouble i had with getting as far as two thousand five hundred and eighty four in fact i venture to suggest that i may never have got there although i would like to think

what

god knows the number of times that the jolly old fibonacci got restarted you would think that i would get the hang of it but it was like something new each time this due to the generous intervention of the non-anaesthetic chemical sedation several hours previously one one two three five eight et cetera

of course i could have used the traditional ovine sleep induction method but frankly the sheer effort required to imagine two thousand five hundred and eighty four sheep shambling over a rickety old gate was beyond the poor old bonce and enough to make the heart sink

and god knows the heart did sink

But where is all this headed? Beckett’s characters notoriously fail to reach an end, whether it be Mercier and Camier winding up exactly where they started off from or Vladimir and Estragon who never even leave their starting spot. The question here is: Will the guy in the bed ever get out of it? As the work progresses we start to figure out what he’s doing there and who “the kindly hands that brought nutrition” belong to and it’s really not that complex. But I won’t spoil it.

The influence of Beckett and Joyce is unmistakable. In a short interview the author says:

I’ve been enormously affected by Finnegans Wake and the questions it poses about literature in general. If we all form part of the same narrative, then any individual experience can be generalised and vice versa. I find Finnegans Wake an extraordinarily human book for that reason – to quote our Beloved Chancellor, “we’re all in this together.”

The most obvious models for the narrator of Verruca Music, in terms of narrators who don’t really do a great deal and are in some sort of state of dilapidation, are the three in Beckett’s Trilogy – Molloy, Malone [Dies] and The Unnamable. I’m sure the reason why some readers find Beckett thoroughly depressing is that he holds a totally unforgiving mirror up to the absurdity of life. As a hoary old existentialist I find the pointlessness of his characters’ situations both absolutely hilarious and deeply moving.

I can see why his publisher might have mentioned the Goons and Peter Cook but, for me, they’re a bit of a stretch; the book is neither silly enough to evoke the Goons not satirical enough to suggest Peter Cook at his best but if you appreciate both of these then you’ve clearly got the right mindset to give Verruca Music a go.

Gary Varga, one of the reviewers on Smashwords—who gave the book five stars incidentally—had this to say:

Part of the charm is this being kept in the dark with regards to superfluous information which would weigh down such a light hearted read. By light hearted I mean exactly that. This is easy to read but has a dark malevolence always in the shadows. For me the scenario eludes to a far darker situation than the one admitted to.

And I have to agree with him, especially with regards to the light heartedness of the book. Beckett can be funny, yes, but it’s a certain kind of humour and it often goes over the heads of people. Perhaps because his protagonists are often octogenarians (if they can even remember their ages) and seem to exist outwith a time and place that most of us can relate to. There’s not one of us who hasn’t been sick in bed and that’s a very familiar place to start off with. This book is not Beckett-lite or even Joyce-lite; it is its own thing even if it’s not ashamed of its influences.

The book is available as an ebook from Amazon or Smashwords for pennies or as a paperback from Lulu for £8.00. I was delighted when a friend on Facebook directed me to it which is how I ran across it. Makes one wonder how much other good stuff there is out there that none of us know anything about.

***

Hailing from Birmingham in the West Midlands, singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Stuart Estell performs on more instruments than is healthy—mainly concertina and dulcimer, but nothing's off-limits really. Except woodwind. He doesn't get on with woodwind. He likes loose-leaf tea, Morton Feldman, cheese and Land Rovers apparently; he currently runs a 1993 Defender 110 County. He’s also so passionate about cacti he blogs about them at Blossfeldiana.

Verruca Music is his first long prose work as far as I can tell—he calls it a ‘novel’ although I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to word counts—but he really says very little about his writing on his website. He has, apparently, been writing a small amount of verse for the first time in years and several of his poems are up on the Year Zero Writers website: These Days, Sphaeroid, two poems and an untitled poem from the Higgs Boson Anthology. You can hear samples of his music on his myspace page too.